For Fat Loss: You’re doing a lot more work with the squats. Burning through a lot more calories. To lose fat: daily calories burned must be more than daily calories consumed. So compound movements help with this.

The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism will be. You’ll build much more muscle when ya focus on compound movements. More muscle means quicker fat loss.

If your goal is fat loss, you’re doing yourself a disservice spending an entire training day focusing on a single muscle group.

Arm day is the last thing that’ll help ya get rid of flabby arms. Know what will? Focusing on training the largest muscle groups, and in turn building a faster metabolism.

Now, don’t let the above convince ya isolation exercises are worthless. They’re actually super beneficial, and should be included in your training program.

The mistake most people make is prioritizing isolation exercises over compound exercises.

Isolation exercises are great for mind-muscle connection. Being able to “feel” the muscle you want working. Pre-exhaust techniques with machines are solid for this. Wanna feel your glutes more in your squat? Bust out 20 glute bridges immediately before squatting. Your booty will be lit.

On the same note, I like to use isolation exercises to activate specific muscle groups before my compound lifts.

Example: The muscles of the upper back are extremely important to keeping the shoulders injury free. Before any type of pressing, I go through the following routine I picked up from Cody “Boom Boom” McBroom (https://boomboomperformance.com) to activate my upper back musculature.

A1) Straight arm pull down 2x10

A2) Cable row 2x10

A3) Facepulls 2x10

Isolation exercises are a great way to add more work to muscle groups you want to focus on. You get a lot out of compound exercises, but they’re taxing on your body. Do to many, and ya want be able to recover.

Say ya want to build your shoulders. You do 4 sets of barbell overhead presses + 3 sets of dumbbell overhead press + 3 sets of heavy Arnold Presses. Too much. Keep this up and you’re on your way to a shoulder injury

But if ya did: 4 sets of barbell overhead presses + 3 sets of lateral raises + 3 sets of facepulls, you’re golden. You’ll be able to recover, and the extra isolation work will speed up your shoulder gains.

After this, add in 2 to 4 isolation exercise. Focus these on weakness, lagging muscle groups, or whatever you want to build more. 2 to 4 sets. 10 to 20 reps. Focus on “feeling the burn” in the desired muscle group. 30 to 60 seconds rest.

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